Monday, July 14, 2014

The Gender-Neutral Microphone

Stories From Swamp City

Some stories you just can't believe, even if you're standing there watching it play out...

Let's rewind a bit.

Last Thursday, I was out on business for The Man, meeting at a regularly scheduled gathering of community volunteers and doing my bit to provide some technical chops should the gathering need my expertise.

Now, this is a group that, while they tend towards activism, it's a low-key sort. You don't get a lot of fire-breathers and torch & pitchfork types. There's not a lot of overlap into the more fringe-y political segment of the volunteer crowd.

Every so often, though, a ringer slips through...

During a public comment session, there's a representative from a group that provides aid & counseling to some sort of perpetually imperiled minority group. I think it was the Left-handed Astigmatic Lesbians of Former Crown Colonies, or something like that.

Since there's more than a few oldsters and those with diminished hearing about, these meetings require speakers to use a microphone, both for clarity and so the recording secretary can get everything into the minutes.

Well, take a guess what happens when a standard Shure microphone gets handed to a hardcore lesbian...

You can tell she hates holding it. She's got that two fingertips & thumb pinch on it, minimizing contact like it's covered in oppressive patriarchal goo.

There's some trouble getting her understood. It's a big room, and she's holding the mike at arm's length and it's not picking up her voice.

Finally, the guy on the sound board keys in and says "Ma'am, you need to hold the mike closer, please."

Her reply? "I'm just not comfortable holding this...this... THING that close to my lips!"

I shit you not, friends & neighbors...

We try to swap out for the #2 mike. No go. It's apparently an uncircumcised version of the same phallic symbol.

She's joined by one of her womynist co-empowerers, and there's some agitated back & forth about which one's going to grab the bull by the horns, so to speak, and get their message to the masses.

Eventually the sound guy comes to the rescue with a radio mike. It's apparently a gender-neutral non hetero-normative bit of amplification gear. At any rate, the business end is closer in size to a clitoris than a dickhead.

I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for one of these antiques. If you squint hard enough, it kind of looks like a vajayjay...